Write Stuff

Fan Fiction is Really Not Like This

2011-08-16T13:14:00.002-04:00

Well, a lot is. This is the sort of thing that gives fanfic a black eye. Fanfic, IMO, is fine; plagiarism is not.

Place Name Generators

2011-07-03T16:50:00.000-04:00

Why He Writes

2011-04-23T12:05:00.000-04:00

Publishers Weekly has a nifty feature: "Why I Write..." which is written each issue by a different writer. They're short pieces, not even a full page. In the April 11, 2011 issue, which features articles on SFF. Harry Turtledove explained why he writes, which is basically that he can't not write. And he said this, too:

"Very often, when I'm working, I'm interested in finding out what happens next, because sometimes I don't know in advance. I'm not a writer who plans everything out before it goes down on paper. I usually know in broad terms where I'm going, but not how I'll get there. And getting there, as in so many things, is much of the fun."

He says other cool stuff, too, about wanting to entertain and about the joys of research, but this is what really resonated with me. I don't usually have the broad idea of where I'm going, at least, not until I've written 1/3 to 1/2 of the story and can see things starting to gel and unfold. And when I read things like this from successful writers, I want to take it and rub it into the faces of the people I interacted with on AOL's old Writers Club message boards, those people who insisted outlining in advance was the "right" way to do it.

Writing Process

2011-04-01T01:10:00.000-04:00

This chart found on Boing Boing is funny yet rings true.

Another Author Flare-Up

2011-03-29T11:29:00.000-04:00

I shouldn't be so amused and entertained by this sort of thing, but I am. A self-published author freaks out after a poor review on Amazon cites numerous typos, misspellings, and poor grammar. The entertainment factor kicks in by her response, which is full of... yup, you guessed it! Typos, misspellings, and poor grammar. I've got nothing against self-publishing. I actually admire folks who do it and succeed with it. But really, if you can't act like a professional, at least act like an adult.

This is On Target

2011-03-19T15:10:00.002-04:00

Surprising results given the choices weren't all that relevant to me. This is, after all, what I write.

You Are Fantasy / Sci Fi

You have an amazing imagination, and in your mind, all things are possible.

You are open minded, and you find the future exciting. You crave novelty and progress.

Compared to most people, you are quirky and even a bit eccentric. You have some wacky ideas.

And while you may be a bit off the wall, there's no denying how insightful and creative you are.

What Kind of Book Are You?

The First Rule of Blogthings Is: You Don't Talk About Blogthings

A Fresh Face

2011-03-18T15:08:00.000-04:00

I decided to perk this blog up a bit. No big redesign, just tweaking the template. I also added a links section for articles I've found online with advice for writing query letters and synopses. If you know of any other good ones, let me know in a comment. Thanks.

I'm slowing going through my links on delicious, which include a lot of writing links and I plan to organize them more there, and add more sections of links here. I'm mostly doing this for me, but if they help anyone reading, that's great.

I'm still blogging about my personal writing over on my LiveJournal, with the posts mostly friends locked, but I do want to keep using this blog for general posts about writing.

As an update, I'm finished the final draft of my ms, finally! and am now working on the query letter and synopsis, which is why I've tackled those links first.

For Your Consideration or Amusement

2011-02-26T12:31:00.001-05:00

I really dislike the whole "rules of writing" thing. Back in my AOL Writers Club message board days, a number of pro writers suggested that the only true rules were the ones governing grammar, spelling, and punctuation (which could be broken as needed) and the notion that words must somehow be committed to paper or pixels. So you can imagine that this article on some writing rules gave me a few chuckles.

This one really gave me pause, and a giggle:

"7. Smarten up your protagonist.
Your protagonist is your reader’s portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you’re creating. They don’t have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering."

This could be useful for some situations, ie a tight third person narration or first person narration using the protag, but if you're writing omniscient, I don't see how this is a factor. The storyteller not being the protag can reveal whatever the author wants revealed.

And that's the problem with advice about rules, or even guidelines which are somewhat better/more useful. They're often unclear. They can be confusing or even contradictory. They often need explanations and they have exceptions. Sometimes, explaining everything that would follow would take a book. If you leave off a detail, as in the narrative style or pov affecting what #7 excerpted above says, then you'll give an eager writer looking for advice a likely wrong impression. That writer might be a newbie who doesn't know yet how to use that "rule" or "guideline" in his or her own work/writing style. And the attempt to force it to work could make things worse. And that leads to frustration. Believe me, I'm the voice of experience here, though the "rules" I'd try to slavishly follow were different than in this list, mostly. Enough so that I tried to stop writing for a decade.

Here's a link that's much more fun: 100 Best First Lines.

What Rules?

2010-12-10T21:46:00.000-05:00

Here's a good take on supposed writing rules and what a story should do. Some good advice, too.

The Dreaded Query

2010-11-20T22:36:00.000-05:00

Advice on querying, from an editor and a writer.

100 Best First Lines

2010-09-26T12:06:00.000-04:00

I don't think I've posted this before. It's pretty cool: 100 Best First Lines From Novels. Found on Bill Crider's blog. He's a mystery writer who doesn't blog about writing, but about books and popular culture and oddities in the news.

My favorite first line from a book I've read is:

He drank alone.

It's also the entire first paragraph of John Steakley's military science fiction novel Armor.

Need a Subtitle?

2010-08-21T21:48:00.000-04:00

Here's a generator of subtitles for non-fiction books. I'm not sure how long this chart will be readily available on Publishers Weekly's site, but it shows how predictable non-fic subtitles have become.

Building Characters

2010-06-07T11:45:00.000-04:00

Some interesting things here, on Lynn Viehl's blog, most of which I don't find useful or relevant for my writing or writing process. But the journaling idea is pretty cool. I might try that.

Fanfiction

2010-05-14T00:49:00.000-04:00

Fanfiction is in the midst of another controversy. Here's a good sum-up and defense of fanfic, one of the best I've read.

Blog Facelift

2010-03-13T01:45:00.000-05:00

Blogger has a new Template Design area in the Blogger Draft version, and I couldn't resist trying it out. I rather like the look I chose for this blog. Maybe I'll even post more often. That's the goal, anyway.

The Motivator

2010-01-17T13:08:00.003-05:00

Write or Die, for when you need a bit of a push. And no, I haven't tried it.

Too Funny Not to Share

2009-12-30T23:37:00.000-05:00

Tom Christensen's Glossary of Publishing Terms
.

What Joe Konrath Knows

2009-12-28T11:08:00.001-05:00

A distillation of his 500 posts so far on writing and the writing business.

The Nature of Arcs in Writing

2009-11-15T02:05:00.000-05:00

I was looking for a particular post on the Kung Fu Monkey blog and found this review of the Star Trek 2009 movie, too, which does a nice job discussing transformative and revelatory arcs. John Rogers is a TV writer and he makes some fascinating points. There are some interesting comments, but most are focused on the merits or lack thereof, of the movie and not the writing points, and as expected from some folks in fandom, some of the comments get rather irksome. Still, this is a good springboard to thinking of the importance of heroes and character development.

And for the record, in the original Star Trek series, I thought Kirk was the hero, and the star of the show was the Enterprise, itself. :)

Elizabeth Moon

2009-08-09T21:20:00.000-04:00

This post on Joseph Mallozzi's blog is an interview with Elizabeth Moon. Mallozzi (Stargate) holds a monthly reading club and Moon's The Speed of Dark was a recent read. Moon was nice enough to answer reader questions, some of which shed light on her writing process. She's a "write to see how it turns out writer." So, another one for my side of the writing equation! And the book, about autism, is excellent, btw.

Owning Your Characters

2009-06-27T13:48:00.000-04:00

An aritcle in the June 22, 2009 issue of Publishers Weekly about the Catcher in the Rye case -- a Swedish writer wrote a book based on J. D. Salinger and his famous character, Holden Caulfield, at age 76, which he claims is not a sequel despite the publicity to the contrary. What the author, Fredrik Colting, says in the article:

"My only intention was to explore the relationship between Caulfield and Salinger." ... "I wanted to explore what happens to characters. When a book is finished, do the characters cease to exist, or do they live on somehow."

Isn't that what fan writers do? Isn't that the core issue for fanfic writers for tv shows no longer being produced, movies already made, books already written? The whole "further adventures" thing? Even if there are official sequels?

And is it realistic of Salinger, who, according to the article, has refused over the years to ever allow any adaptations of the book, because, as explained by his agent, Phyllis Westberg,

"He feels strongly that his fiction and his characters remain intact as he wrote them."

How does that reconcile with classroom discussions of Catcher in the Rye, which is a longstanding staple of school reading lists, and book discussions groups, where readers will bring their own interpretations of the characters? Who really "owns" the characters once they're released into the wild and find an audience? Legally, it's the author? But emotionally? Spiritually? The readers. Like it or not, the reality is that characters become a collaborative entity of the creators and the audience. Who I think Caulfield is and who Salinger thinks he is and who Colting thinks he is, and who any other reader thinks he is might be very different or similar yet subtly different characters. And for many in the audience, the character doesn't cease to exist when the book is already read, the movie or tv show viewed. They live on in our minds, our hearts, our imaginations. And some of us write about them.

It'll be up to the courts to decide if we have the right to distribute those works. In Colting's case, if he has the right to distribute them in the US.

To Be Free

2009-06-06T11:53:00.000-04:00

This article in Publishers Weekly (May 18, 2009) -- Rip My Book, Please -- is an interview with Chris Anderson, auhtor of Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Anderson makes some interesting points about the benefits of giving away content -- for FREE!!! -- online as a way to stimulate sales. In an excerpt from the book, he quotes Tim O'Reilly, a publisher:

"...the enemy of the author is not piracy, but obscurity."

Neil Gaiman's offers of free downloading of a couple of his books for a limited time to promote them, resulting in increased sales of all his books, is also mentioned. There's some real food for thought here re: the changing economics of publishing online that could change the publishing industry for the next few decades. I might have to read the book. Maybe on the Kindle I'll be getting. :)

Suggestions for the Publishing Industry

2009-04-26T13:53:00.002-04:00

Jonathan Karp offered his ideas in the recent issue of Publishers Weekly.

A Writers' Glossary

2009-03-27T21:25:00.002-04:00

Too much fun, had to share.

Prologues

2009-02-02T09:41:00.003-05:00

My recent post on the rec.arts.science fiction.composition usenet group about prologues that I want to save, so I'm posting it here. I've probably posted similar things here over the years, but that's never stopped me before and won't now. ;)

In response to a post about immediacy of books that don't have prologues.

I've read prologues that quickly set up something intriguing that turns out to be in the past yet will play a vital role in the actual story and I've read openings that are first chapters that read like infodumps or meander through setting up the ... uh, setting. Many books without labeled prologues have them. They end up being the first few paragraphs or the first scene of the first chapter. Even the use of a "Galactic News" or "Encyclopedia Galactica" item at the start of a chapter serves that purpose.

I've always read prologues as first chapters. Just because there's a particular label on it doesn't make it any less a part of a book. Some books start in the wrong place but that's true for ones with a labeled prologue or that start with chapter 1. Some books don't even have chapters.

One of the more delightful books I've read in years -- and a first novel, I believe -- is The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue, a fantasy that starts with a few pages of first person narration explaining hobgoblins and what they prefer to be called and so on. I thought it was a slow start, yet it was intriguing enough for me to keep reading. Fortunately, it wasn't too slow and I was well rewarded for sticking with it. And given how much info the opening pages covered that were vital and how much more info needed to be covered as the book progressed, it worked. It set the tone, and pulled me into the story. Everyone I've recommended it to has loved it.

And I think I knowing something the characters don't doesn't eliminate surprise because there are all sorts of other things to discover. Books with multi povs work that way. In my WIR, I have pov for the protag plus one of the not so good guys and the reader, due to reading scenes from the not so good guy's pov, knows things the protag doesn't. Yet I like to think I have surprises there, too, because I don't show everyone's pov.